Smart Mouth Waitress (9 page)

To pass the time, I read all the back-lit advertisements for exciting careers in tourism or dentistry, as well as a disturbing but almost-pretty ad for donating your lungs. I turned back to the career ads, wondering if the models were people in those careers, or simply models. They weren't good-looking enough to be fashion models, but they weren't quite average-looking either. Could I get a job as a slightly-better-looking-than-average model for career ads?

When I was in high school, I thought I'd have things figured out by graduation. So many other kids knew exactly what they wanted to be, from veterinarians to hockey players. A lot of their career goals were ridiculous and unlikely, but still, I envied them their dreams.

The only thing I'd always known about my future life was I didn't want to be like either of my parents. I didn't want to diagram water pipes and talk about retirement, nor would I choose to be chewed up and spat out by the entertainment industry.

Done with the ads, and wanting to avoid conversation with the guy who'd just sat next to me, I pulled out my phone. The guy had light brown dreadlocks and wore sandals that highlighted his gnarly yellow toenails. He was maybe twenty, but had the toenails of a much older person.

Minutes passed, and he still hadn't said anything to me. I nearly started a conversation myself, just to make things normal, when I realized he wasn't talking to me because I didn't have my dreadlocks anymore. We were no longer in the same club, insta-buddies.

That gave me mixed feelings: relief tinged with loneliness.

On my phone, I scrolled through my emails, looking for messages from my mother. A new one from her came in as I was looking at the screen. We do have a psychic connection at times—one that mystifies my father. The text read
check out this arm candy
, and she was standing next to that skinny guy who's in
Maroon 5
and also on that singing show,
The Voice
. He's got that pretty-boy, sexy look: Adam Levine.

He had the
Moves Like Jagger
, and his arm around my mother.

While you might think it's cool to meet rock stars, or hear about meeting them from a family member, it's tempered by that uneasiness you might get from seeing a dude—a hot one who always has his shirt off in music videos—touching your mom. She's a person in her own right, but she's still
your mom
.

I showed the photo to the guy sitting next to me—the guy with the dreadlocks, and tried to explain the whole situation, but he was not very chatty. He said, “I'm German, no English.”

“Sure you are,” I said, returning my attention to my phone.

It wasn't the worst bus ride of my life, but things
were not right in the universe that night, and I was in a strange emotional state—kind of a full-moon feeling. I wanted to go to the country and bay at all the stars you can't see in the city. I wanted to row a boat out into English Bay and be alone.

Instead, I went home, washed up the dinner dishes, and did laundry. Like a good little housewife.

Chapter 7

Wednesday at work, I was off my game.

“Scrambled,” I said to the grown woman with the stuffed-toy octopus on her lap.

“No,” she said, gagging like she was going to throw up. “Don't be revolting. Over easy.”

“That's how I'll have mine too,” her husband said.

As I put the order in to Donny in the kitchen, I wondered if I was normally wrong that often, or if I was having an exceptionally bad day.

When I told you my superpower was knowing how people like their eggs, that wasn't exactly true. There are four main ways to get your eggs: poached, scrambled, over, and sunny-side up.

Poached people have a look. Imagine someone who is opposed to fun—generally against enjoyment. Picture that person with their little wire-rimmed glasses or their permed hair. That's the poached look. Poached is the only style with no oil, salt, pepper, or fun.

Foodies and most Asian people go for sunny-side up, and the rest of humanity gets either scrambled or flipped.
Over easy
is by far the most popular, at about sixty percent popularity, and I think it's because people like the label for themselves:
I'll have mine over easy because I'm cool like that.

What I do to make it seem like I'm psychic is I guess. The key is to make it sound like you're offering an option, so if they don't jump on your suggestion, you can move down to the next on the list. Fortune tellers do the same thing, more or less, naming off a letter of the alphabet and fishing for a reaction.

So, when it comes to the eggs, I simply take an educated guess, and when I'm right, I smile and say, “I knew it.”

However, on that Wednesday, I wasn't right once, if you don't count the regulars, whose preferences I'd memorized.

At two o'clock, I was relieved to wipe the breakfast specials off the board and switch over to the lunch menu, which didn't have eggs.

I was bummed that I'd gotten dressed up the night before, only to get ignored by Marc. Dating seemed like a lot of effort. My all-too-willing prep cook, Toph, was starting to look better and better.

As I was thinking about him, he brought a tray of glasses up for us, his biceps showing under his thin shirt. I felt dirty for even looking, because while Toph and I were only a month apart in age, there was something
little-brother-y
about the guy. Apparently, I was into guys a couple of years older than me, like Marc.

I wanted to talk to Courtney about my boy crushes, as well as about her girlfriend, but the lunch rush went on forever. Near the end of my shift, I cornered her by the coffee machines.

I said, “I have some concerns about your girlfriend.”

She put one paper coffee filter in the machine and one on top of my head. “I won't get her pregnant, Mom.”

I left the coffee filter crown on my head. “I think she's jealous of me.”

“Of course she is. You're my best friend. Deal with it.”

“You know?”

She measured out the coffee grounds, which smelled so good. I don't drink coffee, but sometimes when I grind the beans, I get the urge to shovel them into my mouth.

“Perry, if you're picking up on a vibe, you're probably not wrong. She's a smidge insecure now because she's going through some stuff. It's only natural.”

“It's not a vibe, Courtney. She threatened me.”

“With what? How, exactly? Did she say she was going to punch you out?”

“It was implied.”

Courtney pressed the red button and the machine began huffing and gurgling. “She's just teasing you. Brit really likes you, I swear. She thinks it's cool you're taking care of your family while your mom's out of town. Very responsible.”

“Whatever.” I took off my paper hat and crumpled it into the garbage. “Consider her
on warning
, from me.”

“How did it go with your guy, Marc? I saw you chatting up his friend, the artist. Marc's eyeballs practically fell out of his head when you were hugging his friend.”

I squealed. “Really?” I hadn't been hugging his friend, but I had been pretty close to Cooper when I let him use my arms as his for a gag. Furthermore, I had not
minded
the close, physical contact with him. He was much more fit than you'd expect an artist to be. Thinking about pressing my face in the spot between his shoulder blades put a Mona Lisa smile on my lips and a tilt to my head.

Courtney asked, “What's your next move?”

“Marc likes girls who look normal, so I'm going to be normal.”

“Normal?”

“He called it something else. Authentic.”

Courtney frowned as she pulled at her row of false eyelashes and adjusted the edge. “Don't ever change for a guy.”

“Easy for you to say.”

The train whistle blew with an order for a table on Courtney's side.

While she was finishing up with her table, I got my phone out and googled Marc to see what else I could find out. With just his first name, however, that proved impossible. His friend, Chris Cooper, was far easier to find.

I located Cooper on Facebook, where he had a completely unsecured profile. Through his friend list, I found Marc, but I didn't send a friend request to either. Marc only had one photo visible to the public, but it was a good one.

I went back to Cooper's page, hunting for more photos of his friends. I guessed he kept it open for his art career, as there were a lot of posts about his paintings. His abstract, large-scale art was growing on me. None of the paintings were
of
anything in particular, but they were enjoyable to look at and admire, like the mountains, or the ocean, or your own freshly-manicured fingernails.

The blue-haired girl was in many of the pictures, and her name was revealed to be … Sunshine Cooper.

A wave of nausea washed over me. Speaking as someone with a weird name, I have to say people with odd names are so much more trouble than people with normal names. Maybe they're spoiled rotten growing up, or maybe their parents are narcissists and it's genetic, or maybe the whole world treats them like one-of-a-kinds and it goes to their heads.

I know I'm not an easy person. I try to be good, and kind, and moral, but I am not easy.

Sunshine, how easy are you?

I was imagining blue-haired Sunshine with her little paws all over Marc when Courtney came by and laughed at the wretched look on my face.

Courtney said, “You must be looking at that photo of your mom with Adam Levine.”

“How did you know about that?”

“It was on a bunch of blogs. I'm sure it's nothing. From what I read, she was just down at a taping for
The Voice
and went backstage to meet some people.”

I grumpily put my phone away. “She could have told her own daughter the whole story.”

Donny, who was listening at the window, stuck his head through and said, “I have a man-crush on Adam Levine.”

“He's a handsome man,” Courtney said.

“Does that make me bisexual?” Donny asked Courtney.

“If you have to ask, it means yes, you are.” Courtney grabbed a clean butter knife from the utensil bin and gently touched it to Donny's left shoulder, then his right. “I hereby knight you a bisexual,” she said.

They carried on for a few more minutes, making jokes about different grades of bi-curiosity, but I wasn't paying attention.

Courtney waved her hand in front of my face and asked me why I was so quiet.

I told her I was thinking about my overdue library books, but the truth was, I'd been having a little fantasy about Adam Levine, Marc, and Cooper fighting over me, all of them wearing nothing but pajama bottoms.

What can I say? I'm a sick girl.

At home, my family was not impressed with dinner that night. We were out of peanut sauce for the stir-fry, so I made my own, using peanut butter and the other things typically listed on the side of salad dressing: oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, and salt.

Garnet pushed his still-f plate away. “Bro, I'm not gonna say it's the worst thing I ever ate, because at least there's no eggplant in here.”

My father grabbed the salt shaker and gave his plate a liberal coat. “It's fine for tonight, but I think I'll buy my lunch tomorrow. I do applaud your effort and ingenuity, though.”

I finished chewing my broccoli and swallowed. The sauce was on the sweet side, but teriyaki is sweet, and both of them loved teriyaki.
They're just scared of trying new things
, I told myself.

“What does authentic mean to you guys?” I asked.

They stared back blankly.

“This guy I like, he's into authentic girls. What does that mean?”

“No padded bra,” Garnet said, grabbing some bread and buttering two slices.

“Be yourself, Perry,” Dad said. “Be your own lovely self.”

Garnet laughed hard, chunks of bread flying out of his mouth.

“Dad. I'm always myself. I was just thinking … it's like on
American Idol
when the judges tell the contestants to
just have fun with it
. What they really mean, according to Mom, is to rehearse your butt off until you have every note and move in your muscle memory, then smile while you're doing it and make it look easy. They're not having fun so much as they're crazy prepared.”